BATON ROUGE — The Department of Children and Family Services has, for multiple years, failed to follow multiple documentation requirements for payroll and assistance programs offered by the state agency, a legislative audit released Monday says.

The audit highlights that a former DCFS employee had made nearly $100,000 worth of unauthorized fuel transactions.

Of those transactions, a large portion came from federal dollars. The employee charged $5,191 to the Social Services Block Grant and $32,555 to the Foster Care federal program through the cost allocation process, the audit details.

"DCFS policy and procedures require each DCFS office to have a Fleet or Safety Coordinator responsible for overseeing the FuelTrac account," the audit says, noting that the employee resigned in March 2024.

According to the audit, DCFS also did not properly collect documentation for cash assistance recipients under its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

The program provides financial aid for children who are in need because they do not have sufficient financial support from parents and requires participating parents to provide monthly income records to maintain eligibility.

The audit said that 13% of "work-eligible participants’ hours either did not agree to supporting documentation or supporting documentation of work activities was not maintained as required by federal regulations." The audit says that this is the 13th consecutive year that a percentage of the program's 2,900 clients did not comply.

The audit also said that the department has, for the third year in a row, not followed payroll policy for the certification and approval of time statements and the approval for leave requests. It is also the third year that DCFS has been shown to not have reported subawards in compliance with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act in the FFATA Subaward Reporting System for the Foster Care programs as required by federal regulations.

DCFS also didn't properly ensure payments charged to the Social Services Block Grant federal program through the Tracking Information Payment System were supported and approved, as well as not properly ensuring "the correct allocation of expenditures in accordance with the Cost Allocation Plan, which assigns costs to federal programs."